The Wil of Wit, Wit's Wil, or Wil's Wit, Chuse you whether, a collection of prose pieces intermixed with verses, written in or before 1582, had been printed five times by 1606. To the Melancholie Humours, published in 1600, were prefixed some eulogistic lines by Ben Jonson, then twenty-six years old, and reverencing his senior Breton as "a mind attired in perfect strains." The Soul's Harmony, 1602, is a collection of "Comfortable Meditations," originally distinct sonnets and songs, but bound up by the poet in one consecutive poem and entitled The Harmony of the Soul, "who," he says, "in the gracious thoughts of God's blessing and humble talk with His mercy, thinks herself half in heaven ere she come there." Five of Breton's shorter pieces appeared in the Phoenix Nest, 1593, and eight in England's Helicon, 1600. A complete Edition of his works is now being edited by Mr. Grosart for the Chertsey Worthies' Library.

PHILLIDA AND CORIDON. 1

In the merry month of May,
In a morn by break of day,
Forth I walked by the woodside,
Whenas2 May was in his pride.

There I spied, all alone,

Phillida and Coridon.

Much ado there was, God wot!

He would love, and she would not;

She said, 66 never man was true;"

He said, none was false to you ;"
He said, he had loved her long;

She said, "Love shall have no wrong."

Coridon would kiss her then;

She said, "maids must kiss no men

Till they did for good and all :"

Then she made the shepherd call

All the heavens to witness truth,
"Never loved a truer youth!"

Thus, with many a pretty oath,
Yea and nay, and faith and troth,

1 From England's Helicon, 1600.

2 When.

Such as silly shepherds use

When they will not Love abuse,
Love, which had been long deluded,
Was with kisses sweet concluded;

And Phillida, with garlands gay,
Was made the Lady of the May.

FROM THE SOUL'S HARMONY.

THE SOUL'S HEAVEN.

The worldly prince doth in his Sceptre hold
A kind of Heaven in his authorities;
The wealthy miser in his mass of gold
Makes to his soul a kind of Paradise ;
The epicure that eats and drinks all day

Accounts no Heaven but in his hellish routs ;
And she, whose beauty seems a sunny day,

Makes up her Heaven but in her baby-clouts.1
But, my sweet God, I seek no prince's power,
No miser's wealth, nor beauty's fading gloss;
Which pamper sin, whose sweets are inward sour,
And sorry gain that breed the spirit's loss.
No, my dear Lord, let my Heaven only be
In my Love's service but to live to Thee!

FROM MELANCHOLY HUMOURS.

A POET'S COMPLAINT OF HIS POVERTY.

While epicures are over-glut, I lie and starve for food; Because my conscience cannot thrive upon ill-gotten good.. Some have their houses stately built and gorgeous to behold, While in a cottage bare and poor I bide the bitter cold. Some have their chariots and their horse to bear them to

and fro,

While I am glad to walk on foot, and glad I can do so.. They, like the weilders of the world, command and have their will.

While I, a weakling in the world, am slave to sorrow still. The owl, that makes the night her day, delights yet in the

dark;

But I am forced to play the owl, that have been bred a lark.

1 Childish rags.

The eagle from the lowest vale can mount the lofty sky; But I am fallen down from the hill, and in the vale must die.

The horse, the ox, the silly ass, that tug out all the day,

At night come home and take their rest, and lay their work

away;

While my poor heart, both day and night, in passions overtoiled,

By over-labour of my brain doth find my spirit spoiled.

The winds do blow away the clouds that would obscure the

sun;

And how all glorious is the sky, when once the storms are done!

But in the heaven of my heart's hope, where my love's light doth shine,

I nothing see but clouds of cares, or else my sun decline. The earth is watered, smoothed, and drest, to keep her gardens gay;

While my poor heart in woeful thoughts must wither all

away.

So that I see each bird and beast, the sea, the earth, the sky,

All sometime in their pleasure live, while I alone must die.

FROM THE WILL OF WIT.

THE SONG OF CARE.1

Come, all the world, submit yourselves to Care,
And him acknowledge for your chiefest king;
With whom no king or raiser may compare,
Who bears so great a sway in everything:
At home, abroad, in peace, and eke in war,
Care chiefly stands ; to either make or mar.

The court he keeps is in a wise conceit,2

His house a head where reason rules the wit,
His seat the heart that hateth all deceit,

His bed the brain that feels no frantic fit,
His diet is the cates 3 of sweet content,—
Thus is his life in heavenly pleasure spent.

1 "Care" is a personified virtue, offspring of Wisdom and Devise (another word for forethought or good sense), whose mission it is "to glean the good from ill," and "to comfort Misery." "Care," says Wit to Will, is both a curse and a comfort; all is in the use of it. Care is such a thing as has a great a-do in all things; why, Care is a king in his kind. Did you never hear my discourse of Care in verse?" and proceeds to rehearse the same to his friend Will.

2 Concept, thinking.

3 Dainties,

His kingdom is the whole world round about,
Sorrow his sword to such as do rebel,
His counsel wisdom that decides each doubt,
His skill fore-sight, of things to come to tell;
His chief delight is studies of devise1
To keep his subjects out of miseries.

Oh courteous king, oh high and mighty Care,
What shall I write in honour of thy name?
But to the world, by due desert,2 declare

Thy royal state and thy immortal fame.
Then so I end as I at first begun,

Care is the king of kings, when all is done.

THOMAS LODGE.

(1556?-1625.)

THOMAS LODGE was the son of a grocer who was at one time Lord Mayor of London. He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and afterwards led a life of varied occupation and adventure. At successive periods he studied law in Lincoln's Inn, joined in two privateering expeditions to the Pacific, earned his living in London as an actor, and studied physic at Avignon. There he graduated as Doctor in Medicine; and finally he established himself as a Roman Catholic physician in London, with a considerable practice among his co-religionists. He died of the Plague in 1625. Lodge's literary works comprised both verse and prose. He wrote two dramas, one of them in company with Greene; a series of Pastoral Sonnets to Phyllis, published in 1593; also Satires in prose, and Histories, being stories in both prose and verse. The plot of Shakespeare's As You Like It is found in Lodge's pastoral tale of Rosalind, written during one of his voyages, and published in London in 1592. This was a prose idyll, with songs and sonnets interspersed, and had the following fanciful title :

ROSALYNDE. EUPHUES' GOLDEN LEGACIE: found after his Death in his Cell at Silexedra. Bequeathed to Philautus Sonnes, noursed up with their Father in England. Fetcht from the Canaries by T. L. Gent.

1 Included in Mr. J. P. Collier's "Shakespeare's Library," a collection of Romances, etc., used by Shakespeare as the foundation of his dramas.